On Nov 6, @davidbrowder_PT and I will be presenting at the annual PPS meeting in Colorado Springs, Co (not too late to register!) on Successful Practices of Successful practices.  In essence, reporting on what practices are considered “best” that successful private practices embrace or engage.  In order to determine this, 289 private practice respondents representing almost 1200 clinics participated in a structured survey instrument that examined 86 different business practices.  Participants were assured confidentiality and only practices in which 51% or greater ownership by PT’s were invited.  The respondents were divided into 2 groups-a “high” profit group and a “low” profit group.  As it turn out, there are about 20 areas of practice that are statistically different amongst these two groups and that will be the focus of the presentation.  Future blog posts will focus on various descriptive statistics of this study as we believe it is the largest practice study performed in our profession relative to “business practices”.

There are some very impressive areas that private practices overwhelmingly participate.  Almost 90% provide charity work, 60% sponsor running events, and 71% participate in health fairs. I must confess that the numbers surprised me. While I will reserve whether these findings convert to profitability for the presentation, there is no question that they convert to the “brand” of physical therapy for current and future patients.  While I don’t have data on non-private practices, I am certain the numbers are equally impressive.  I would suggest that is why we are winning in many ways-more patients accessing PT’s, industry seeing the value in our services, and more folks truly seeing us as the expert providers for “aches and pains”. Grass roots efforts are a long, slow pace  but in my view they are paying off.  We are fortunate to be part of such a giving profession.

Perhaps we market better than we think we do.

Thoughts?

@physicaltherapy